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Florida shooting suspect charged amid questions over warning signs Florida shooting: grieving community pleads for end to gun carnage
(about 2 hours later)
Nikolas Cruz charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder over shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in Parkland Gunman Nikolas Cruz, 19, charged with 17 counts of murder
Trump seems to reject moves towards gun control measures
Victims: friends and family pay tribute to lives cut short
Oliver Laughland and Oliver Laughland and
Richard Luscombe in Parkland and Richard Luscombe in Parkland and
Jon Henley Ed Pilkington in New York
Thu 15 Feb 2018 12.20 GMT Thu 15 Feb 2018 17.51 GMT
Last modified on Thu 15 Feb 2018 15.05 GMT First published on Thu 15 Feb 2018 12.20 GMT
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Questions have emerged over whether law enforcement officials and local authorities failed to act on warning signals about the teenage gunman who killed 17 people in a Florida high school with an AR-15 assault rifle on Wednesday. The school shooting in Parkland, Florida, that claimed 17 lives has provoked an eruption of impassioned calls for action against gun violence from young survivors, community leaders and a reeling sheriff left shell-shocked from one of the worst massacres in modern American history.
Former classmates of the suspected gunman, 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz, who was charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder on Thursday, described him as “weird” and “a loner”, and said “everyone predicted” he would “do something”. Last year he was expelled from the Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in Parkland for disciplinary reasons. At a Thursday press conference, local officials lined up to express their determination that something must now be done to stem the bloodletting in America’s schools and other public places. The shooting ranked among the top 10 deadliest gun rampages in the country, three of which have happened in the past four months.
A comment left on a YouTube video by a user named Nikolas Cruz warning “I’m going to be a professional school shooter” was also flagged to law enforcement officials last September and subsequently removed by YouTube. “The violence has to stop. We cannot lose another child in this country to violence in a school,” said Florida’s governor, Rick Scott, promising to meet state lawmakers to search for solutions on mental illness and gun control. The sheriff in charge of Broward County, Scott Israel, called the event a “horrific, horrific day” and urged the public to do more to report suspicions: ““Don’t think about calling us – call us,” he said.
Ben Bennight, who posted the video and alerted the FBI, told Buzzfeed News that officers had followed up “immediately”, asking him if he knew anything about the user who had left the comment and taking a copy of his screenshot. The official in charge of public schools in Broward County, which includes Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school, the scene of Wednesday’s tragedy, said: “Now, now is the time for this country to have a real conversation on sensible gun control laws.”
While the FBI has not confirmed the account belonged to the alleged gunman, FBI agents interviewed Bennight again after the shooting, wanting to know if he knew anything about the user who had left the comment. But amid the anguished cries for action rising up from Florida, a national tone was set by Donald Trump that was largely devoid of a sense of urgency. In a televised “address to the nation” made in part directly to the children of America – “you are never alone”, he said – the president gave no concrete indications of steps to prevent repetitions of Wednesday’s disaster.
The Nikolas Cruz YouTube account was taken down on Wednesday night. The Broward County sheriff, Scott Israel, who identified the shooter as Cruz, said police had found “very disturbing” material when searching his social media. Trump said he would visit Parkland, and stage in coming weeks a meeting of governors from around the country to discuss school safety. But he warned against early measures: “It is not enough to take actions that make us feel we are making a difference. We must actually make that difference,” he said.
Twelve people died inside the high school, two more just outside the building, one in a nearby street and two in hospital, Israel confirmed, adding that the gunman had been armed with at least one assault rifle and “countless magazines, multiple magazines”. The suspected shooter, Nikolas Cruz, 19, was expected to make his first appearance in court on Thursday afternoon, charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder. Even as he was booked, details emerged of potential warning signs that had been missed in advance of the massacre.
Cruz was booked into the county jail in Fort Lauderdale on Thursday morning after being questioned for several hours by state and federal authorities. The FBI disclosed that they had been informed last September that a YouTube user going under the name Nikolas Cruz had expressed a desire to become a “professional school shooter”. FBI special agent Rob Lasky said data reviews had been carried out but the bureau “could not further identify the person who made the comment”.
In a tweet on Thursday morning Donald Trump made no mention of gun control, instead focusing on Cruz’s background. “So many signs that the Florida shooter was mentally disturbed, even expelled from school for bad and erratic behavior,” Trump wrote. “Neighbors and classmates knew he was a big problem. Must always report such instances to authorities, again and again!” The shooting started at about 2.40pm on Wednesday, shortly before Stoneman Douglas broke for the day. The gunman entered the compound of about 3,000 students meticulously equipped and prepared, with gas mask and smoke grenades and quantities of ammunition sufficient to move around the three storeys of the building, leaving a trail of devastation behind him.
On Wednesday, officers surrounded the campus, directing the evacuation of hundreds of students, while other teenagers hid inside cupboards and under desks to stay safe. Witnesses later told reporters that they thought the school alarms were a fire drill until they heard gunshots in the hallways. Pamela Bondi, Florida’s attorney general, described the terrible job of having to inform families of the deceased. “Many of them had siblings in the school who survived, and a brother or a sister did not, so that was extremely tragic,” she said.
The tragedy appears to be the eighth deadliest mass shooting in modern US history and one of the worst ever school massacres. Israel – whose triplets attended the school – called it a “horrific, horrific day”. Video footage captured by students recorded long bursts of gunfire of about 40 discharges accompanied by screaming as students cowered under tables and hid in closets. Survivors’ accounts also recorded acts of extraordinary courage, including reports of a football coach, Aaron Feis, who jumped in front of the gunman to shield his pupils from the bullets.
A total of 17 people were taken to three hospitals, of whom two died, and at least three more were in critical condition. The suspect was also treated and released into police custody. “When he was tragically, inhumanely killed, he did it protecting others,” said Sheriff Israel after Feis’s death was confirmed.
Dakota Mutchler, a 17-year-old junior at the school and a former friend of Cruz, said he had started “progressively getting a little more weird, and I kind of cut off from him”. Mutchler said Cruz had posted about killing animals on social media and talked about guns and target practice. There were also accounts of exceptional bravery from students. Colton Haab, 17, pulled 90 fellow pupils from the hallway into a classroom after the shooting started and barricaded the door with synthetic sheets as gunshots rang outside. “I knew if he broke the window he was coming in the room, and if he was coming in that room I was going to stop him with everything I had or die trying,” he said.
“Everyone in the school that knew him speculated about him,” said Mutchler. “When someone’s expelled, you don’t really expect them to come back … If they’re expelled, they’re gone. But of course, he came back.” Twelve people died inside the school, two outside and another on the street. A further two people died in hospital, and 14 were injured. Medical staff said on Thursday that of the injured, five had been released and seven remained in critical condition.
Victoria Olvera, also 17, said “he just changed. As far as I knew, he was like a future school shooter.” Another student told CNN: “All the kids joked … saying he was the one that screwed up at school, but it turns out everyone predicted it. That’s crazy.” Parkland, a well-to-do suburb of Fort Lauderdale, has now entered that most mournful ledger of American towns that have had carnage wrought upon their schools. It will forever be tagged with Columbine, the Colorado high school where 12 students and a teacher were killed in 1999, and Sandy Hook, scene of the mowing down of 20 young children and six adults in 2012.
According to the Sun Sentinel, Cruz’s mother died of pneumonia last November. She and her late husband had adopted Nikolas and his biological brother, Zachary, after the couple moved from Long Island in New York to Broward County. What Parkland appears unlikely to become associated with, given the present state of the nation, is any search for a solution at federal level. A day after the tragedy, signs of any meaningful debate within Congress were scant at best.
The boys were left in the care of a family friend after their mother died, a family member said, and moved to stay at a friend’s family around Thanksgiving. That family’s lawyer, Jim Lewis, said they knew Cruz owned an AR-15. They made him keep it locked up in a cabinet, to which he had a key. “We need to pray”, and “we need to take a breath and collect the facts”, were the responses given by Paul Ryan, Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, when asked how the nation’s lawmakers would react.
Cruz was arrested outside the school campus. Helicopter footage showed seven officers putting handcuffs on a man in a dark burgundy shirt. They placed him inside a police cruiser. Jeff Sessions, the US attorney general, delivered more pointed words to a conference of sheriffs, saying “we have got to confront the problem. This situation cannot continue.” But aside from a promise to “study the intersection of mental health and criminality”, he avoided references to specific policy changes.
A 15-year-old student who did not want to be named told the Guardian he had been in the same building where the gunman opened fire. “I heard three gunshots,” the student said. “And then some more down the corridor. Anger and frustration began to explode, however, among those touched most intimately by the calamity. A pupil named Sarah at Stoneman Douglas responded to Trump’s tweeted condolences by lashing out in her own tweet: “I don’t want your condolences – multiple of my fellow classmates are dead. Do something instead of sending prayers.”
“We shut our classroom door and stood to the side of it so we wouldn’t be seen. Twenty minutes later the police broke in through the glass. I was terrified.” Small groups of students assembled on Thursday morning on the roadway outside Stoneman Douglas, still processing the loss of friends and classmates killed in the attack. Kaleb Martinez, 16, a junior year student was inside the school when the shooting occurred but had left the freshman building where the shooter is said to have opened fire just 10 minutes before the massacre began.
Sivan Odiz, a 23-year-old local resident with close family friends in the school, said a 15-year-old friend of her brother had been inside a classroom targeted by the shooter. She had been in contact with the student after the shooting happened: “He said he pretended to be dead, but when he got up, there were two people shot. He’s really shaken up.” “I’m just blessed to be here today,” he said, adding he had seen through social media that two of his friends were reportedly killed.
A teacher, Melissa Falkowski, described to CNN how she hid with 19 children for more than 40 minutes. “It was the end of the school day and the fire alarm went off, and we went to evacuate as if it was a fire drill,” Falkowski said. “This is the best, definitely the best time to be talking about cutting out guns.” Matinez said. “People who have guns, that needs to go, that needs to stop. This is crazy. No family should have to worry about sending their kids to school and if they’re going to come home or not. It’s a terrible feeling.”
The school “could not have been more prepared for this situation”, she said, adding: “We have trained the kids for what to do … We did everything that we were supposed to do. I feel today like our government, our country, has failed us and failed our kids and didn’t keep us safe.” Any debate about how to respond to gun violence is likely to be informed by details unfolding about the Parkland shooter. Questions are now being asked about how a teenager known widely in his community as a “troubled kid”, who had received sporadic treatment for mental health problems and was expelled from Stoneman Douglas school for violence, had an obsession with firearms and delighted in shooting animals could so easily buy a semi-automatic AR-15 rifle of the sort that has been at the centre of so many previous rampages.
Despite this litany, and despite being too young to buy beer, Cruz was able legally to purchase an AR-15 about a year ago, according to a law enforcement official cited by Associated Press – federal law in the US allows anyone over 18 to buy a rifle given limited background checks.
Another pressing question was how an individual whose last known employment was working in a low-paying dollar store could afford multiple rounds of ammunition, enough to sustain prolonged bursts of firepower. In his Instagram and other social media feeds, Cruz had posted images of at least six guns spread across his bed with the caption “arsenal” and a box of bullets that he noted “cost me $30”.
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